Ester Ried Yet Speaking Part 27

This was the thought: Suppose Dirk Colson should want to take his sister. Sallie did not believe it in the least probable; she had not that amount of faith in Dirk Colson; but suppose he should, Mart could not go, for the reason that she would have nothing to wear.

And here was Sallie's pretty cape, which would cover the worst of her dress, and her pretty bonnet, which she knew would make a picture of Mart; but if she lent them it meant staying at home to Sallie. _Could_ she do it? Could she bear to think of such a thing? What would Mark say?

What would he do with his other ticket?

Would she be likely ever to have another chance to go to that wonderful hall, and be like other folks?

But _Mart_ had never been anywhere in her life.

"And I," said poor Sallie, catching her breath with a sob, "have been often for a walk on the brightest streets, and looked in at the shop windows, and everything. I 'most know I will help her to go if I can."

Young Ried had no conception of the sacrifice for which he had asked.

It is little wonder, surely, that Sallie's voice faltered that same evening, as she explained to Mart, who had slipped in for a bit of talk, that if ever she wanted to go anywhere very bad, she was to let Sallie know, and she should have her cape and bonnet to wear. Then she had anxiously planned for her a way to mend her dress, so that it would look quite well under the cape, and she had even urged:--

"Now do, Mart, if anybody should want you to go don't say you won't; but take your chance, for you don't know what may come."

Also she bore with patience Mart's scornful laugh, and emphatic statement that no chances ever came to her, and n.o.body ever wanted her to go anywhere. As she talked she grew interested and eloquent; urged earnestly that Mart should embrace the first opportunity to go somewhere, and wear her new cape and bonnet. At the same time she was silent about the lecture. Suppose no chance should come? Then it would be doubly hard to Mart to have had the possibility suggested. The same delicate reasoning had held her from dwelling on her own prospects. Some people would have been very much astonished over the amount of delicate consideration for the feelings of others which could be found in that little room.

Dirk loitered strangely over his meagre dinner the next afternoon. It was late, for he had secured a position at last in one of the printing offices, and was apt to take his meals at any hour when it happened to be convenient to do without him at the office. He had only been three days at work, and Mart had taken little notice of the new departure, except to remark grimly that it would not last; but to Sallie she had boasted that Dirk had gone to work as hard as anybody. If somebody could only have told Dirk that his sister ever boasted of him it might have helped him much during these days.

"What are you hanging around for? You've got all there will be to eat in this house to-day, and it is time you were off." This was the ungracious manner in which the sister took note of his lingering. She was painfully afraid that he had already grown weary of regular employment, and the fear made her voice gruffer than usual.

His reply amazed her; in fact, it amazed himself:--

"Mart, I've got tickets to a show,--a nice place,--and I want you to go along."

"Humph!" said Mart, "that is a likely story!"

Then he grew earnest, displayed his treasures, and urged her acceptance--quite astonished with himself the while. _Did_ he really want her to go, he wondered, or did he want to please Mrs. Roberts?

You would have been interested, an hour later, to have seen Mart skip up the rickety stairs leading to the Calkins abode. You would probably have thought that she endangered life or limb by her rapid movements; but Mart was used to such staircases, and the news she had to communicate required haste.

"There's a chance!" she said, breathless with speed and eagerness; "Sallie Calkins, there's a chance, and you'd never guess how. Dirk he wants me to go to a show with him this very night! He's got tickets. It is a big show,--where all the grand folks go. It is in the very biggest hall in this city, and Dirk he says I am to go. Sallie Calkins, do you mean it, truly, that I am to wear your lovely new bonnet and cape? Do you suppose I can really go anywhere? I don't known why Dirk wants me to so bad, but he coaxed and coaxed."

Poor Sallie! She stooped quickly to pick up a pin from the floor, so that Mart might not get a glimpse of her eyes with the sudden tears in them. Yet, as she stooped, she made her final, grand sacrifice--Mart should go!

Then she entered with entire abandon into the preparations. Not only her bonnet and cape, but her shoes--new ones that Mark had bought her with his first earnings after his illness--were to attend the lecture.

She rejoiced over the excellent fit of the shoes. She did more than this. As Mart watched the process of b.u.t.toning them, and remarked complacently that she shouldn't wonder if Dirk would buy her a pair some day, when he earned money enough, she kept her lip from curling with an incredulous sneer. You will remember that she had not the slightest faith in Dirk.

Neither must I forget that there was another thing to lend--her comb, in order that Mart's wonderful yellow hair might be for once reduced to something like order. And at the risk of leading you to think that Sallie was altogether too "aesthetic" for her position in life, I shall have to confess that this was her hardest bit of sacrifice; her comb was so new and so pretty!

However, it did its duty on Mart's tawny locks, and the transforming effect was marvellous. In fact, when all was ready, the cape adjusted, the hat which Mrs. Roberts had shown her how to wear set on the yellow head, Sallie said not a word, but went to the packing-box in the corner which served as a treasure cupboard, and drew forth the one possession about which she had been utterly silent--a little hand-gla.s.s which Mark had brought her one winter evening just before he was hurt. A cheap, little, ugly gla.s.s, which you would have turned from in disgust, saying that it made your nose awry, and your chin protrude and your eyes squint, and was altogether horrid; but, held before Mart's glowing face, what a secret did it reveal! Mart looked, and was silent, too; and went home in a hushed frame of mind to wait for Dirk. Home was deserted. The mother had dragged her wearied body out for a day of "light" work. The time had gone by when she was able to do any that people called heavy.

Where the father was, none of the family knew, and their chief hope concerning him was that he would stay away as long as possible.

I find myself longing to give you an idea of what that elegant, brilliantly lighted hall, with its brilliant audience, was to this girl, and being unable to do it.

When people live so far below us that our every-day experiences are to them like a day at the World's Fair, it is very hard indeed to describe how our special treats affect them.

It is a treat to everybody to hear Gough. How then can I tell you what it was to this girl and her brother? Dirk listened; he must have listened well, for long afterward he was able to repeat entire paragraphs, and to imitate the manner of the great orator with remarkable skill;--yet at the time he would have seemed to a close watcher to have been absorbed in another way. He looked at Mart somewhat as he had on that Sabbath when his acquaintance with Mrs. Roberts began.

But the thought which had dimly haunted him that day blossomed on this evening. Certainly Mart looked like Mrs. Roberts! It might be folly to think so; doubtless the fellows would make no end of fun of him if he should ever tell them so, which he meant to take excellent care not to do; but the fact remained, that in Sallie's bonnet and cape, and, above all, with the waves of hair floating about her, there was a look which instantly and strongly reminded him of that lady.

There was another listener at the lecture who was unexpectedly present.

Part of poor Sallie's trial had been to tell her brother, who had been radiant for a week over the prospect of taking her, that she had with her own hand put away the blessing. How would Mark take it? Dirk's forlorn-looking sister was no favorite of his. I think it would have been very difficult to have convinced him that there was a trace of Mrs.

Roberts in her face.

But such curious creatures are we that it actually hurt Sallie to see how quietly he took the great sad news of her sacrifice. After the first start of surprise, he seemed preoccupied, and she could almost have thought that he did not hear her explanation. She had much ado to keep back the tears, but she had made a special little feast for him that evening, with a white cloth on the table, and a cup of actual tea, and the cup set in a saucer. She was not going to spoil the scene with tears; so after a little she said, cheerily:--

"Now you have a chance to do something nice for somebody. Who will you take on your ticket?"

"I was thinking," he answered, slowly. "You know it is a temperance lecture, and it is by a wonderful man. The fellows in the shop have been talking about him all day, and they say you just can't help _thinking_ when he gets agoing; and I was just thinking, What if we could get _him_ to go, and he would listen, and get to thinking."

There are no italics that will give you an idea of the peculiar emphasis which the boy put on the p.r.o.nouns. Sallie understood; that "he" could mean but one person in the world. But her brother must have answered the look on her face, for she spoke no word.

"Sometimes they _do_, Sallie. There was old Pete, you know."

Oh, yes, Sallie knew old Pete; every body in that alley knew him; a notorious drunkard once, of the sort which people, even good Christian people, are apt to p.r.o.nounce hopeless; yet now he wore a neat suit of clothes every day, and brought home twenty pounds of flour at one time in a sack, and bought his coal by the barrel. Wonderful things occasionally happened in that alley.

"Yes," said Sally, "that is true; and old Pete wasn't much like him."

The tone spoke volumes. It would have almost angered her, even now, to have had it hinted that old Pete was superior to that father, though hardly a person acquainted with the two but would have said that there was more hope for old Pete, even in his miserable past, than for this one.

How they managed it, those two: the difficult task of getting him persuaded to go, find then the more difficult task of keeping him sufficiently sober to get there, would make a story in itself. I fancy there are many such stories in real life which will never get told. The probabilities are, if they were, some wise critic would p.r.o.nounce them unnatural and sensational.

Suffice it to say that the task was accomplished, and among the most attentive listeners to the great speaker that evening was Sallie's father, while she sat at home and mended a badly torn jacket, and cried now and then, and was glad and sorry and proud and frightened and hopeful by turns all that long evening.

I am not sure but it was better for her that she sat at home. I don't know just what she might have done had she been in the hall to see her father, at the close of the meeting, shamble forward with the crowd, and sign his name to the total abstinence pledge.

She might have screamed out in her excitement, or she might have fainted; for although there were those who said--some with a sneer, and some with a sigh--that "signing the pledge would not amount to anything; the miserable fellow could not keep a pledge to save his life!" Sally would have thought nothing of the kind. She had faith in her father's word.

It is a wonderful stimulus to have some one who believes in us.

CHAPTER XXV.

"WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO ACCOMPLISH?"

"Do you know," said Mrs. Roberts, addressing Gracie Dennis, who, with young Ried, had waited in the hall for her to join them (they were ready for the lecture, and were to take up Mr. Roberts on the way): "Do you know that I have a desire which I see no way of realizing? If Mr. Colson should bring his sister with him to-night I should like so much to get possession of her and bring her home with me! But I have been planning all day, and see no possible excuse for such an apparently wild proceeding."

I want you to notice how naturally Mrs. Roberts said "Mr. Colson"; she never talked about Dirk under any other name; she even taught herself to _think_ of him as "Mr. Colson." Consequently, when she spoke the name in his presence, there was not a trace of unnaturalness in tone or manner.

The others tried in vain to follow her example. Dr. Everett could not speak of him in this way without slight hesitation and a touch of embarra.s.sment. "The truth is," said he, "I think _Dirk_ all the week, and on the Sabbath I find it impossible to reach up to 'Mr. Colson'

without an effort." There was no touch of "reaching up" or reaching down, about Mrs. Roberts' talk with her pupils. It is possible that this is one link in the chain of influence which she was weaving around them.

Gracie Dennis' face expressed curiosity, and when they were seated in the carriage, she referred to the cause:--

"But Flossy, I cannot imagine why you should want to do such a thing. It will certainly be too late to-night to try to get acquainted with her. I should think some time when you could have an unbroken evening would be the better for experimenting."